🧠 Mindset shift. Painful, but essential.
For years, as a good software engineer, I have been an IC (individual contributor).
Give me an idea, ask me to build it and there is no limit.
But… validating an idea, understanding if it makes sense before writing a line of code?
It's another sport. And I learned the lesson the hard way.
In the true spirit of #buildinpublic, I want to share a mistake I made.
I'll pay for it, but you can take home the juice, for free.
📌 The lesson in short:
- Build-first is a mistake. Wasted time costs more than anything else.
- A good idea always falls into a niche. Find the right leaf on the right tree.
- Do analysis: real problems, competitors, keywords, trends.
- If everything gives positive signals, don't write code yet.
- Pen and paper: develop 2–3 variations of the idea tailored to that niche.
- Choose one and build only the landing page.
- Tell the pain points, use cases, storytelling.
- Add a waitlist form and measure engagement.
- Insert questions to collect needs from users.
- Install analytics.
- Launch a small social campaign (with LinkTracking.app, of course 😉).
- Only when you have real numbers, visitors, subscriptions, responses, you understand if you have something valid.
- And only then you start building something. Essential, useful, measurable.
The rest will come by itself.
This approach has opened my mind.
I'm working on a small framework, a pipeline to find, test and validate ideas and engagement.
I'll share it as soon as I complete the puzzle.
In the meantime, I hope this experience makes a click in your head too.
💬 Comments, criticisms, similar experiences? Write to me. Let's talk about it.
Top comments (0)